


to: my songbird

by inacherii



Series: letters to you (alone) [2]
Category: BEYOOOOONDS (Band), Hello! Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22984735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inacherii/pseuds/inacherii
Summary: it was all she’d ever known: the birds, the piano, and honoka
Relationships: Kobayashi Honoka/Satoyoshi Utano
Series: letters to you (alone) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651609
Kudos: 4





	to: my songbird

This morning, she wakes up to the soft chirping of birds, who have made their home just outside her window. Four blue birds perched on the branch, eating breadcrumbs, faced in her direction as if they’re admiring her.

She lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the bright morning light, lets herself rest there to start adjusting to the sun. A little movement in the corner of her eye makes her glance towards it, she starts to wake up, and her eyes and ears catch more than just birds. A familiar voice hums a familiar tune, and she turns to the familiar girl sitting in the armchair beside her bed. 

The girl is looking down, staring at a piece of paper, a musical sheet, filling in the notes with a pink pen. She puts her soul into it, she can tell, the way her eyes focus so intensely onto the sheet, breathing life into the music she so cherished.

Finally, when she gets the girl’s attention, the tune has already come to life and bloomed. The girl looks up at her, taking off her reading glasses, and smiles.

“Good morning, Uutan.”

Their eyes meet without Utano returning that smile, but the aspiring musician doesn’t take that to heart. It’s simply morning routine, being the first person she sees whenever she wakes up, after a while the greetings and the words seemed to naturally float away. 

“You woke up a little later today, but that’s okay, I managed to finish a piece today. They already served breakfast, but I can call them back for you? It was pretty good, they’ve got a new kind of cereal.”

She shakes her head. Utano isn’t a girl of many words, she lets her friend talk endlessly if she chose. It’s always felt like she’s never been fond of words, now and before she’d been here. However, her friend is. She thinks how wonderful it is to have created a certain kind of harmony with her that they could call their’s. They live here, after all, it’s a hard place to find someone to get close to, to have someone to call your own.

“It’s alright, Honoka. I’m not that hungry.” 

Honoka smiles at her again softly, nodding, she understands. With that, Utano begins to drift to sleep again, sighs as she hugs herself and lulls herself back into her dreams.

She wakes again in the evening, and even in the later hours, Honoka chooses to stay by her side, breathing life into the music she loves. Humming her new tune over the sounds of the hospital outside.

Their eyes meet again, she watches Honoka breathe in the moment like they hadn’t seen each other in months, for once everything feels okay.

The doctor’s office had never been a pleasant place to be. The room is cold, the office is always so plain and void of anything at all. Nobody likes to be there, it’s silent, too silent, especially before the doctor delivers their diagnosis.

She gets used to it, after a while, it’s something she wished she could care more about. But it happens so often she has one visit here a week. The silence washes itself away, having gotten used to it, like a fate she couldn’t seem to escape no matter how much she would try.

“We’ll be keeping you here longer.” The doctor exhales sharply, his arms folded. “We still can’t guarantee that you’re stable yet.”

Utano watches the doctor’s lips move for ten more minutes, fully accustomed to that silence that surrounds them, he goes on for an hour.

She doesn’t believe she has a home beyond this hospital, at least she doesn’t think she knows of the one before she was here. 

But she likes to convince herself that living in a hospital has its perks. She doesn’t clean for herself, doesn’t cook, doesn’t do her own laundry. She’s allowed to sleep all day, for recovery’s sake.

Here she has someone to call her own, Honoka, who waits for her every morning, every evening, sitting in the chair and writing her very own music.

Honoka is waiting outside the office’s door, as usual. 

“Anything new?”

Utano shakes her head no, a smile creeps on her lips as Honoka takes her hand. 

She leads her to the cafeteria, they find an empty table in the corner of it, the quietest part of the already so quiet cafeteria.

They sit side by side, there’s already music sheets and a keyboard on the table. 

Honoka lifts her hands and starts to play her newest tune, the song echoes throughout the cafeteria alongside the hospital’s racket.

Utano feels her eyes drift back to a close, leaning onto Honoka’s shoulder, breathing her in and relaxing. She didn’t even realize she was tense.

She’s given a kiss on the top of her head as the song keeps playing, putting her to sleep. Utano’s heart intertwined with the music, as it does with Honoka, she’s never felt so alive.

The harsh, cold air hits her face when they climb up the steps, and walk out the open door. The roof isn’t a place that she’s been before, Honoka’s been here before though, many times apparently. She takes her to the cafeteria after the appointments.

The rooftop acts like an observatory of sorts, letting the two girls look at the world beyond. Sometimes, Utano wonders what life is like beyond the walls of this hospital.

The keyboard and the sheets sit on a bench in the middle of the clearing, Honoka quickly sits sideways on the bench, her back turned towards Utano. Utano sits the same way, leaning on Honoka’s back but not enough to keep her back from hurting. 

“We can watch the birds from here.” She can’t see Honoka’s smile, as she shuffles through her stack of beloved papers. “There are so many!”

They relax there, back to back, Utano looks up to the sky as Honoka plays her music. 

It brings tears to Utano’s eyes, how alive she feels in this moment.

“Crying?” The music stops for a little, she's still playing with her right hand, but she holds Utano’s hand firmly in the other. The happiness that surges within her makes her feel it even more.

The music stops completely, and Honoka turns around to give Utano a hug, wiping away the stream of tears on her face. 

“Just happy.”

“Just happy?” Honoka laughs, squeezing her a little tighter. She’s never felt so thankful.

Utano nods. “Because of you.” 

Honoka holds her in silence for a minute, and she buries her face into the nook of Utano’s neck. “It’s not all me though.”

“It is. I could’ve been happier before the accident, but I don’t think it’ll matter.” Utano laughs quietly. “It doesn’t matter if I can’t remember it.”

“Hey!” Honoka hits her lightly. “Who says you’ll never remember?”

“It’s okay if I don’t.” Utano leans her head back onto Honoka’s shoulder so they could see each other. Honoka sees Utano’s teary eyes and frowns. “Those memories are gone, but at least I can make new ones with you.”

Honoka hums, the birds chirp around them as the summer breeze flows through. 

“The accident took so much from me, I thought I didn’t know how to feel,” Utano continues, softly, “but then you happened to me. I figured that if the accident took from me, then it’d give back too.”

Honoka pretends to choke back a sob as she holds Utano tighter. No words would ever be enough to tell Utano how thankful she is. “So you’re what it gave me, too.”

“Then what did it take?” 

A different glow appears in Honoka’s eyes as she looks up to the sky, reveling in all its light. Utano is always so intrigued by how Honoka handles her situation so well. “This sickness has taken so much away from me.” She exhales, letting her feelings float away. 

“More than you could ever imagine.”

“Morning, Uutan.”

This morning, Utano wakes up to Honoka, and not the songbirds. Her eyes slowly flutter open as she finds Honoka happily looking down on her.

Honoka backs away as Utano stretches on her bed, yawning. “What’s going on..?”

She sees the glint in Honoka’s eyes, she’s suspiciously excited, Utano wonders if she’s going to perform for her. But Honoka turns around towards the table just below the TV they never use. 

“I’ve got a surprise..” She turns back around with a short hop with something in her hands. Utano squints a little bit to see it, a cup of ice cream. “Sorry, had to wake you up before it melted, but look! Ice cream!” 

Utano smiles seeing how enthusiastic Honoka is about the cup as she sits down beside her on the bed. “What flavor?”

“My personal favorite, vanilla, wanna share? Honoka chuckles to herself, opening the cup and setting the lid aside. “The nurses asked me about it yesterday, I didn’t expect them to actually bring me ice cream.”

Utano nods, and Honoka gleefully feeds her a spoon of it. It’s sweet, it’s so wonderful compared to the bland, awful hospital food that reminds her of death. Yet this sweetness turns bitter. Honoka could only be receiving this special treatment for a certain reason. That her value has only increased because she’s close to death. Utano frowns at the very thought of it. 

Honoka looks at her troubled. “Is it not good?” 

“No.. It’s good.” Utano tenses up, she doesn’t think she can do this anymore.

“Here, have more then.” Honoka tries to feed her another, but Utano pulls her head away from the spoon. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing. But,” She feels like she’s shrinking, “it’s yours, you should eat it.”

“Buuut.” Honoka smiles, spins the spoon around like she’s feeding a baby. “I wanted to share it with you. Food is always better when you share it!” 

“It’s okay. I’m not feeling sweet right now.” Utano falls back into bed pretending she’d gotten another sleepy spell, and Honoka definitely falls for it.

“Alright then!” Honoka happily eats her bittersweet ice cream. “Suit yourself.”

Utano wakes to silence this morning, it’s so unsettling that she jolts out of the hospital bed. The birds aren’t here today, the humming isn’t here today, Honoka isn’t here today.

The sky is still the same, bright baby blue, she lifts her hand to shield her eyes from the light. It feels almost too empty this morning.

She’s never felt anymore afraid, even as someone who’d gone through so much, lost all her memories, someone who fell so close to death.

Her body isn’t yet awake but she stumbles out of her room, dashing her way to Honoka’s ward. She knocks, she doesn’t have to, but by the amount of doctors in the room she assumes she has to. 

An hour passes, and the door opens to reveal the hospital bed. Honoka, her cheerful eyes closed, her keyboard beside her and her face, just as pale as the white blanket she’s covered in.

Utano passes out onto the cold floor.

She’s alive, thankfully.

Now Utano sits beside Honoka in her ward, watching as Honoka coughs and retches. 

Honoka is confined to her bed, sitting there like she’s being wrapped into a burrito, or so she. says. 

She tries to find something within her to help Honoka in any way she can, their fingers intertwined as Honoka stares at the ceiling. She wishes she could breathe life into the girl who had breathed life into her own.

Honoka manages, somehow, to make the best of whatever she’s given. She somehow has so much joy despite knowing that she’s going to die soon.

“Live on. Live a good life.” 

Utano’s vision blurs, but she doesn’t want to lose sight of her, she tries to take in as much of Honoka as she can.

She doesn’t know what life could possibly be like without her (Honoka had been with her for as long as she could remember). The feeling nags at her, and her tears start to fall.

“I think I’d be happy if you lived a good life, wouldn’t I?”

Utano nods wordlessly, she knows she’s an ugly crier.

Honoka laughs at her, Utano’s tears fall even more when she sees how weak Honoka is. Honoka’s hand brushing the tears off of Utano’s cheeks. 

“Try. At the very least, try.”

_1 year prior._

“Miss Kobayashi, I hope you’re aware that this is technically breaking the rules—”

The doctor awkwardly fidgets with his pen as he’s face to face with the patient. Today he doesn’t deliver a diagnosis, it’s the truth he’s going to tell Utano.

“Think about it, please.” Honoka pleads, her eyebrows furrowed, her lips frowned. “Don’t tell her, doctor.” 

He knows how many rules it breaks, but he feels as though this love outweighs them all. After all, he wouldn’t know the struggle of a dying woman, only trying to protect the feelings of the one she loved. Who only wanted to spend more time with the woman who had forgotten her.

“Tell her after I’m gone. It won’t be long, you know that.” A tired sigh escapes her lips. “Until I go, let me stay by her side. I just need to make sure that she can live on without me.”

Utano sits in her hospital bed, surrounded by musical sheets, a keyboard leaned against the wall, and a letter in her hands.

Today, she opens it.

_My songbird,_

__

_I’m sorry for hiding this truth from you._

__

_But most of all, I’m sorry that I cannot be here for you any longer._

__

_You asked me, what the accident had taken away from me, it took you._

__

_It wasn’t your fault, never was, I love you._

__

_I remember your face the first time you visited me here, when we realized that there was nothing we could do to get me out of this hospital, except watch me die of course._

__

_I knew how much it hurt to see me like this everyday, it hurt me to see you too._

__

_One day, you’ll remember the life we had before. Remember who I was and who we were._

__

_And that even before you forgot, you still loved me and I still loved you._

__

_Even if you forget again, I will always love you_

__

_Learn the piano maybe?_

__

_love, Honoka_

__


End file.
